2. And Yo’aḇ sent to Teqowa and brought from there a wise woman, and said to her, “Please pretend to be a mourner, and put on mourning garments, and do not anoint yourself with oil, but act like a woman who has been mourning a long time for the dead.
3. “Then you shall go to the sovereign and speak to him according to this word.” And Yo’aḇ put the words in her mouth.
4. And when the woman of Teqowa spoke to the sovereign, she fell on her face to the ground and did obeisance, and said, “Save, O sovereign!”
5. And the sovereign said to her, “What is your trouble?” And she answered, “Truly I am a widow, my husband is dead.
6. “And your female servant had two sons. And the two fought with each other in the field, and there was no one to part them, but the one smote the other and killed him.
7. “And see, the entire clan has risen up against your female servant and said, ‘Give him who smote his brother, so that we put him to death for the life of his brother whom he killed, and destroy the heir also.’ Thus they would extinguish my burning coal that is left, and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant on the earth.”
8. And the sovereign said to the woman, “Go to your house, and let me give orders concerning you.”
9. And the woman of Teqowa said to the sovereign, “My master, O sovereign, let the crookedness be on me and on my father’s house, and the sovereign and his throne be guiltless.”
10. And the sovereign said, “Whoever speaks to you, bring him to me, and let him no longer touch you.”
11. And she said, “Please let the sovereign remember יהוה your Elohim, and the redeemer of blood not destroy any more, lest they destroy my son.” And he said, “As יהוה lives, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground.”
12. And the woman said, “Please, let your female servant speak a word to my master the sovereign.” And he said, “Speak.”
13. And the woman said, “And why have you reasoned like this against the people of Elohim? For in speaking this word the sovereign is as one who is guilty, in that the sovereign does not bring his outcast one home again.
14. “For we shall certainly die and become like water spilled on the ground, which is not gathered up again. Yet Elohim does not take away a life, but shall devise ways, so that His outcast ones are not cast out from Him.
15. “And now I have come to speak this word to my master the sovereign because the people have made me afraid. And your female servant said, ‘Please let me speak to the sovereign, it could be that the sovereign does what his female servant asks,
16. for the sovereign has listened to deliver his female servant from the hand of the man seeking to destroy me and my son together from the inheritance of Elohim.’